Until it gets a fancier name, the object is called 2003 EL61. It’s a rapidly spinning, football shaped object roughly the size of Pluto. Its elliptical orbit could eventually bring it close enough to Neptune that it would get a gravitational yank into the inner Solar System. It would change from a dwarf planet to a short period comet.
2003 EL61 spins rapidly, turning over and over like a badly thrown football. It completes a rotation once every 4 hours. What could give it such a strange shape and behaviour? Brown thinks it collided with another Kuiper belt object some time in its early history. The impact kicked it into fast spin, and elongated its shape. 2003 EL61 is even surrounded by a set of satellites, which could be the debris from this impact.
Don’t look to the skies just yet, though, 2003 EL61 might take millions of years before its interactions with Neptune shifts its orbit, and sends it into the inner Solar System.
Original Source: Mike Brown’s 2003 EL61 page.
Exploring the Moon poses significant risks, with its extreme environment and hazardous terrain presenting numerous…
Volcanoes are not restricted to the land, there are many undersea versions. One such undersea…
Some binary stars are unusual. They contain a main sequence star like our Sun, while…
11 million years ago, Mars was a frigid, dry, dead world, just like it is…
Uranus is an oddball among the Solar System's planets. While most planets' axis of rotation…
A camera aboard the Mars Express orbiter finds a new lease on life. Sometimes, limitations…